AtkinsRéalis teams with Anduril UK to accelerate sovereign autonomous systems for British defence

Atkin­sRéalis has entered into a team­ing agree­ment with Anduril UK to pro­vide crit­i­cal safe­ty, assur­ance and reg­u­la­to­ry exper­tise that will accel­er­ate devel­op­ment and deploy­ment of autonomous air­craft for UK defence pro­grammes.

The team­ing agree­ment posi­tions Atkin­sRéalis to sup­port Anduril UK in nav­i­gat­ing emerg­ing cer­ti­fi­ca­tion path­ways and estab­lish­ing the assur­ance stan­dards, includ­ing cyber secu­ri­ty, which is essen­tial for trust­ed autonomous oper­a­tions.

David Clark, Vice Pres­i­dent — Glob­al Defence at Atkin­sRéalis, said: “Autonomous sys­tems have right­ly been iden­ti­fied as a pri­or­i­ty for defence trans­for­ma­tion. Deliv­er­ing this vision requires pro­por­tion­ate approach­es which turn inno­v­a­tive tech­nolo­gies into oper­a­tional­ly assured, deploy­able capa­bil­i­ties.

“Through this agree­ment with Anduril UK, we can con­tribute our decades of defence deliv­ery and sov­er­eign pro­gramme exper­tise to help deliv­er trust­ed, deploy­able autonomous sys­tems that bol­ster nation­al secu­ri­ty.”

The exclu­sive col­lab­o­ra­tion for Anduril UK’s uncrewed flight pro­grammes in UK defence brings togeth­er Atkin­sRéalis’ sig­nif­i­cant glob­al expe­ri­ence in nov­el aero­space plat­form devel­op­ment and assur­ance of uncrewed sys­tems with Anduril UK’s advanced autonomous sys­tems and soft­ware-defined defence capa­bil­i­ties.

Beyond pro­vid­ing safe­ty and assur­ance exper­tise, Atkin­sRéalis is sup­port­ing Anduril UK’s estab­lish­ment of a UK man­u­fac­tur­ing site for the uncrewed plat­form, lever­ag­ing its capa­bil­i­ties in deliv­er­ing com­plex infra­struc­ture and indus­tri­al facil­i­ties.

Atkin­sRéalis’ deep knowl­edge of inter­na­tion­al reg­u­la­to­ry require­ments will enable Anduril UK to deliv­er lead­ing sov­er­eign com­mand­ed, not con­trolled, sys­tems.

This exper­tise will sup­port future plat­forms to oper­ate safe­ly and secure­ly, nav­i­gat­ing approvals with the Mil­i­tary Avi­a­tion Author­i­ty and Civ­il Avi­a­tion Author­i­ty, and man­ag­ing defence lines of devel­op­ment pro­por­tion­ate­ly to enable inno­va­tion at pace for British Armed Forces.

With more than 14,000 employ­ees in the UK and Ire­land across over 40 offices – includ­ing around 2,000 work­ing on defence-relat­ed projects – Atkin­sRéalis brings deep domes­tic exper­tise to this col­lab­o­ra­tion.

The man­u­fac­tur­ing site would sup­port Anduril UK’s invest­ment to pro­vide for the British Armed Forces and enable poten­tial exports to wider Europe, con­tribut­ing to UK jobs, the econ­o­my and the defence indus­tri­al base.

Rich Drake, Man­ag­ing Direc­tor of Anduril UK, said: “This col­lab­o­ra­tion is about how the UK builds and fields mod­ern defence sys­tems, not just a sin­gle plat­form. We’re help­ing cre­ate sov­er­eign autonomous capa­bil­i­ty that can be deliv­ered faster, along­side our val­ued part­ners across the British defence ecosys­tem.

“By pair­ing Anduril’s soft­ware-first approach with Atkin­sRéalis’ strengths in assur­ance and reg­u­la­tion, we will ensure that our armed forces stay ahead for the long term.”

The team­ing agree­ment builds on Atkin­sRéalis and Anduril UK’s col­lab­o­ra­tion to explore dual use future flight oppor­tu­ni­ties, announced last year. Today’s team­ing agree­ment deep­ens the rela­tion­ship with an expand­ed focus on safe­ty assur­ance and reg­u­la­to­ry path­ways for autonomous sys­tems in defence.

Autonomous sys­tems rep­re­sent a trans­for­ma­tion­al oppor­tu­ni­ty for UK defence and the future of mil­i­tary avi­a­tion, reduc­ing risk to per­son­nel and deliv­er­ing oper­a­tional advan­tages in areas such as recon­nais­sance. The Strate­gic Defence Review iden­ti­fied autonomous capa­bil­i­ties as crit­i­cal to mod­ernising Britain’s Armed Forces and main­tain­ing tech­no­log­i­cal edge.